大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by Mike Kerins on behalf of Agnes Kerins and has been added to the site with her permission.

I was only a child at the outbreak of the war but I still have vivid memories from this period. I was about three years old in 1939 and myself and my parents, John and Winnifred Collins were living with my maternal grandparents Margaret and Timothy Farray; who were originally from Dublin and Sligo respectively. Tim was a tailor owning a shop in Collyhurst on Rochdale road opposite the Osborne pub. At this particular time my father was on the sick although I don鈥檛 think they received any sick pay in those days. He鈥檇 crushed his arm in some machinery at the foundry where he worked and I was told many years later that he had spent the last of his money that Christmas, to buy me a black toy pram that I pushed around for years.
My grandparents were happy to put us up. They were used to an extended family having raised fourteen children of their own and adopted another four. At this point none of them was living at home of course.
The shop was large and we lived in the back. There was a small window from which we could see customers entering the shop, the majority of whom were mainly clergymen from whom my grandfather earned a steady income. It was not unusual to see a priest or even a bishop being fitted for some article of clothing.
A few doors down was a sweet shop owned by a Mr Irving, Elmer if I remember correctly. He used to send jars of sweets down to the shop for us, toffee or humbugs and the like all made on the premises. I don鈥檛 know if it was the lack of such luxuries later in the war years but the memory of being allowed to watch him making his sweets stays with me, I can vividly recall standing there watching him work; the two of us enveloped in delicious aroma of pear drops.
All this came to an end when arrangements were made for our evacuation. We were to travel by train to a place called Portdunorvic in Wales, along with my grandmother, my mother鈥檚 sister Agnes Hamilton and her son, my cousin Thomas. We were to stay at a house called Mor A Mor, 19 Bryn Fynnor which was at one time owned by my grandfather but was now the home of my auntie Lizzy and her son Arthur Heywood (17). This was all very exciting being out in the country and it was not a bit like Manchester. There was a garden at the back of the house running down to, and overlooking some railway lines. Like in the book 鈥淭he Railway Children鈥� myself and Thomas used to run down and wave at passing trains.
My father and my uncle Tommy used to come down on the train once a month on a Sunday to visit us, both were now working at the foundry in Manchester. The village was a quiet place and generally incident free in the two years that we stayed there, in as far as the war went, and so their visits were looked forward to with anticipation.
I do recall one morning waking up to great excitement in the village. Apparently the previous night a German aircraft had come down on the beach and everyone was eager to see the wreck, we were no exception. We arrived on the beach along with the rest of the village but children were kept at a distance as one of the dead pilots was still in the cockpit.
Eventually we returned to Manchester only to find the shop due to the death of my grandfather and nowhere to live. It looked like we were to become reliant upon the kindness of relatives again.

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